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June 18, 2013

PIMCO to Offer Aria’s Guaranteed Income Product

Bond giant offers GMWB option to its shareholders through the RIA channel

PIMCO and Aria Retirement Solutions announced a new “collaboration” on Tuesday, one in which the bond behemoth will offer Aria’s “GMWB without the annuity” product to its shareholders through the RIA channel.

“PIMCO has the same vision of retirement as us, and is therefore the kind of fund family we want to work with,” Aria CEO David Stone told AdvisorOne. “You have a guaranteed income solution underwritten by Transamerica Capital that is then paired with a top fund family.”

Stone added that other fund family collaborations will be forthcoming.

“The product is unique in the marketplace,” Stone said. “It can be added onto the shareholder’s PIMCO funds, and we’re also developing model portfolios.”

“PIMCO is focused on using its global macroeconomic insights to find the best investment and income opportunities for investors, while also managing downside risk,” Tom Streiff, executive vice president and retirement solutions manager at PIMCO, added in a statement.

Stone noted a new retirement confidence survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute found record low confidence among Americans in their ability to afford a comfortable retirement. This new retirement reality — driven by reduced pensions and Social Security, historic low yields, the threat of long-term inflation, market volatility and growing concerns about outliving assets — is forcing advisors and investors to find new ways to secure a lifetime of income.

“For asset-based fee-only financial advisors, guaranteed retirement-income options have been few and far between,” Stone said. “But RIAs now manage more than $1 trillion in client assets, and they want solutions that fit their business.”

Headquartered in San Francisco, Aria was founded by veteran executives from Schwab and Fidelity, with the “shared vision of building a cutting-edge platform focused exclusively on fee-only RIAs.”

Recognizing the need that effective asset management must balance “an aggressive strategy with the need to protect client assets,” Aria developed a platform that it says supports both objectives as RIAs shift portfolio strategy for clients from asset accumulation to income distribution.